What characterizes the aliveness of this teaching is an ongoing stream of realization, enlightenment, and understanding that continues to grow, deepen, expand, and open up to ever further ways of experiencing reality. Another interesting characteristic of the living nature of this teaching, which is really a characteristic of all life, is that the discovery of a new way of experiencing does not displace the old way of experiencing. Living is an evolution from one thing to the next. Life evolves from what went before and always becomes more fully manifest. It develops more capacities, more richness, more variety, and more creativity in the way it manifests itself. The living and evolving nature of the teaching is apparent in the orientation and the view from which the teaching is presented. Each time we meet together as a school, everything we have explored is presented from a new perspective. The understanding of the teaching as we have learned it is simply opened up further. It’s not so much that the understanding of it has changed but that the understanding has expanded. Like life itself, the teaching builds on itself, living and evolving from one form to another.

Reality is beyond any teachings that can be formulated and promulgated. Reality simply is. Everything we say about it is extra, a creation of the human mind. We cannot adhere to teachings as if they are reality. We use teachings, benefit from them, but then we discard them, we drop them. To carry teachings with us after we learn to live in reality is to carry an extra load. We need only reality, and the teachings are simply vehicles through which to reach and live in reality. Reality is beyond tools, methods, and helpful perspectives. Reality is innocent of it all.

In other words, each genuine teaching is absolute in the sense that it is an objective perception and understanding of reality. But each is absolute relative to its own particular logos, a logos that reveals reality objectively and truly, but differently than other logoi. The principle that explains the differences and similarities in the wisdom teachings is, then, relative absolutism. It is neither absolutism nor relativism. Each teaching is the expression of a particular logos, an authentic way reality manifests itself to individuals. It is not the creation of an individual or a group of individuals, or even a historical or cultural context. These provide the channel, the clearing, or the invitation for a particular authentic way reality can manifest itself, but this way is the creation of the universal logos, the creative dynamism of the ultimate truth. Because each teaching expresses and embodies a particular logos, it is not normally possible, or advisable, to consider that they are talking about the same thing, or that one will experience similar things by traversing their corresponding paths. It is also not possible to translate the experiences and conceptualization of two teachings in a one-to-one manner, for such correlation is frequently not present. Furthermore, it is at best unrealistic to compare two teachings in terms of conceptualizations, experiences, and realizations.

Thus, each moment of our life is the teaching. And each moment has its own value because each moment is really the way that True Nature is manifesting itself, the way it is appearing, the form it is taking. We have seen that when we recognize the truth of our experience, the meaning appears and we can recognize that meaning. When we see the truth and abide in it, we recognize its value. So we look for meaning in our life—what the value of life is—but the fact is that it is not somewhere waiting to be discovered; it is always here. We just need to recognize that it is here.

The interesting thing about the aliveness of the teaching is that each step, each new stage, includes what came before it and reveals more. None of the essential experiences and realizations in terms of aspects, dimensions, and vehicles, has, as far as I know, needed to be changed as the teaching evolves. They are simply expanded and attain more meaning or bring different insights, which are more of a refinement of and opening to different ways of experiencing reality. We are the beings that can consciously know reality and can live it more fully in its totality. But we are also reality; we are expressions of reality. In a deep way, the expressions of reality are not only manifestations of reality but also reality itself. In our work, it’s important that we learn about the various aspects and their issues. It’s important that we learn about the various dimensions and realize them. We need to know and have some experience, some taste, of what realization is so that we can be what we experience, so that we can abide in whatever quality or dimension we are experiencing. This can be what is called a samadhi experience, being the presence or the awareness or the emptiness that we are experiencing. I don’t mean that you as an individual become that, but that your awareness, your beingness, shifts from being the individual to being that. That is the experience of realization, and it is very important that we have the experience of realization and have it in the various aspects and dimensions of our work.

Under normal circumstances, an individual in serious spiritual work follows a particular teaching, a certain path that involves a perspective, a detailed knowledge of Reality and the path to it, along with various attitudes and methods. He needs to faithfully follow the teaching, for a real teaching is the objective manifestation of true and essential knowledge, the nous of true nature. Yet to be fully liberated he must go beyond any knowing, and his realization must be independent of his discriminating mind. This will only be possible only if he does not adhere to his path as the final description of reality -- not because the description is necessarily wrong or inaccurate, but because true nature is ultimately beyond any description, any system or teaching. This possibility of detachment from the path he has faithfully followed is granted when true nature manifests its nonconceptual presence. It appears as nonattachment in his heart, and as total openness in his mind. He is open to see that the teaching he has been following has been, at least partially, conceptual. He can now see all teachings, and all systems and wisdom traditions, simply as useful stories that explain Reality and the path of liberation, but that liberation itself is beyond any and all stories, any and all teachings, any and all knowing.

Furthermore, a teaching points toward reality, but it is not reality and will not give you reality. No teaching, on its own, gives you certainty about what reality is. The final and ultimate judge is you. Who decides ultimately what is real and what is not real? Is any teacher, philosophy, or religion going to decide for you? All of these teachers, religions, and work systems will be happy for you to find out for yourself what life is all about and how to live according to the truth. You cannot be certain of reality in any other way. A teaching points toward the truth, but you need to experience it and find out for yourself that it is reality. You have to find your own certainty; you cannot borrow it, not even from the highest teachings.